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Dance, Girls, Dance I30 Films for Women Made by Women 7 Dance, Girls, Dance OMMUNITIES OF WOMEN function, in Arzner's career as well as in her Cfilms, as perhaps the most consistent and important feature. In this chapter I turn to the two films which epitomize the cinematic implications of those communities. The title of this chapter is taken from what is undoubtedly Arzner's best-known film, Dance) Girl, Dance. l chose this title not only be­ cause the 1940 film is so important to any discussion of the female world cen­ tral to Arzner's work, but also because of the importance of dance in Arzner's work. It is no coincidence that the two films that explore in detail the com­ plexities of female communities are also those in which dance acquires crucial symbolic and narrative significance. To be sure, dance functions quite differently in the two films. In The Wild Party, social dancing and festivities define the changing dimensions of the re­ lationships of the women to each other, to men, and to the world at large. Figures 47 and 48. On the set of Craig)s Wife, John Boles and Rosalind Russell Dance, Girl, Dance, of course, is more explicitly concerned with dance as a oose (Figure 47), and their pose is imitated by Boles and Arzner (Figure 48). MOMA profession, as it traces the divergent and intersecting careers of two different " "-~rhive. dancers with different aspirations. Nonetheless, both films share a preoccupa­ tion with dance as it embodies the relationship between the private and the - ...J1;,e. Whatever else one public spheres, and as it combines women's desires for artistic expression and -.......Bar- community. In addition, the two films are preoccupied with what I will call heterosocial 11,l'II and homosocial worlds, that is, with the shifts from modes of interaction and community based on opposite-sex, versus same-sex, relationships. I have noted that, frequently in Arzner's films, the development of heterosexual romance intrudes upon all-female worlds, and that while the films often conclude with the requisite happy couple, such conclusions seem somewhat fragile in regard to the amount of time and energy devoted, screen-wise, to the female worlds. The Wild Party and Dance, Girl, Dance are the boldest demonstrations of this process. The relationship between homosocial and heterosocial worlds is not just a thematic preoccupation with stylistic effects in Arzner's work. One of the most interesting historical shifts in twentieth-century America was the change, for women, from a public sphere organized largely in homosocial terms to one de­ pendent on heterosocial interaction.' Additionally, this shift was crucial to the I3I I32 Films for Women Made by Women Dance) Girls) Dance I33 lives of women whose emotional and affective lives were spent in the company of other women. If, in nineteenth-century America, romantic friendships be­ tween women were an accepted fact of life, with the passage of time such re­ lationships would be classified as pathological, as detrimental to so-called nor­ mal heterosexual development. Throughout the early decades of the twentieth century the term "lesbian" was used increasingly as a mark of illness, of dis­ ease.2 Neither of the two films under consideration here are concerned, explic­ itly, with lesbianism ( although one character in Dance, Girl, Dance is the most obvious butch in Arzner's work). However, both films negotiate the complex implications, visual and narrative as well as thematic and emotional, of women together. The Wild Party ( 1929) Arzner's work with Clara Bow was one of the most successful collabora­ tions of her career. While Bow was one of the most gifted performers of the 1920s, her films with Arzner ( Get Your Man [192 7] and The Wild Party [ 1929J showcase her abilities remarkably well. The actress was nervous about the com­ ing of sound film, and there are some moments in The Wild Party when her Brooklyn accent overpowers her; but, on the whole, her transition to talking pictures was a success. The Wild Party takes a community of women as its explicit starting point: Figure 49. Helen (Shirley O'Hara) and Stella (Clara Bow) in The Wild Party, 1929. the film opens in 1930 in a Winston' College dormitory room, with Stella Ames MOMA Film Stills Archive. (Bow) and a group of girlfriends giggling and chatting about their club-the Hard Boiled Maidens. The women are uniformly attractive, slender, and fash­ ionable, but a gradual contrast is introduced in two ways-with the arrival of a candidate. Under Stella's tutelage, Helen begins to socialize more, and she Helen, Stella's best friend, who is studious and serious (suggested by her glasses eventually meets George, a young man to whom she is attracted. At a party, and her sensible bathrobe); and later, with the appearance of James "Gil" Gil­ Helen spends the night on the beach with her new love, thus breaking college more, a new professor of anthropology. rules. If this transgression is discovered, she risks losing the scholarship. Un­ Stella tells her girlfriends of how, when she and Helen were sharing a sleep· fortunately, Helen writes to George and alludes to the night on the beach. The ing berth on the train returning to Winston College, she got up at night for a letter is found by a snoopy coed who passes it along to the college authorities. drink and returned to the berth, chilly, and suggested to Helen that they sleep Pretending to be the author of the letter, Stella takes the blame on Helen's ,.,,[ "spoon fashion" to keep warm. A male voice asks her who invited her in, and behalf, and her loyalty to her friend coexists in the film with her developing ,,,,! Stella is shocked to discover that she has entered the wrong compartment. The romance with Gil. The scene in which Stella finds Helen in George's arms is l•l'i next morning, when Stella and Helen go to the dining car, Stella finds a spoon striking for the emphasis, visual as well as narrative, on the bond between the "' with a note from the man, reminding her of the dangers of spoonir~.g.As "co­ two women. Andrea Weiss, commenting on the "subtextual lesbian dynamic" incidence" would have it, the man is, of course, the new professor, alld the film of the film, describes the sce.p.eas follows: "George tries to reassure Stella that traces the predictable yet somewhat unusual courtship of Stella and Gil. he loves Helen and would not take advantage of her, but he misunderstands the The predictability of their pairing is undercut by the emphasis on Stella's cause of Stella's alarm. She starts to cry and responds, 'I'm jealous, you see, I friendship with Helen. The budding relationship between Gil and Stella is by love Helen too!' In this shot Helen moves from George's to Stella's arms, and no means the only narrative development in The Wild Party. The principal sub· the camera moves to exile George from the frame while the two women ro­ plot of the film concerns the coveted alumnae scholarship, for which Helen is mantically embrace. "3 I34 Films for ™1men Made by Women Dance, Girls, Dance 135 If the hard-boiled maidens are largely and notoriously interchangeable, sented in a hilarious shot, in which the crossed legs of the women in the class­ Stella and Helen's friendship is founded upon their differences. Stella-true to room form a virtual wall framing his entry. The effect is as much mockery of the Clara Bow persona-is bubbly and energetic, while Helen is shy and re­ his stodginess as their frivolity. served; Stella is not a serious student, but Helen is regarded as the best student Another kind of opposition between two different kinds of display occurs at the college. The female bond to which principal attention is drawn in the when Stella and three of her friends are forbidden to enter the "costume," a film is a bond based on difference as much as similarity. In this respect, the dance which is similar, the film's titles inform us, to a male stag party. A shot developing relationship between Gil, the serious scholar, and Stella takes as its of the ballroom shows a sea of women's legs, adorned in a variety of different model the friendship we have already seen between the two young women. costumes- male as well as female, contemporary as well as historical. The effect The Wild Party develops according to a series of oppositions-fun versus is carnivalesque, a utopian topsy-turvy world where gender and identity are seriousness, frivolity versus intellect, laughter versus severity. To some extent, performed, engaged with in playful terms. Yet Stella and her friends disrupt the the most extreme opposition in the film is between Gil and Stella, which is, event. They are dressed as chorines, and after they take off their identical fur obviously, a gender opposition as well. But the oppositions are also embodied coats to reveal skimpy (and identical) costumes, with their bare legs exposed, in Stella and Helen's friendship, and as a result the gender opposition is never their attempt to enter the ballroom as a makeshift chorus line is thwarted by so absolute, and the relegation of the friendship subplot to secondary status one of their classmates-who is dressed as a shepherdess. The forbidden entry never so total, as one might expect. functions in two different ways. First, their clothing is too revealing and their Indeed, it is not even entirely appropriate to describe the friendship be­ costumes too provocative, thus connoting a censorship of anything so explic­ tween the young women as a "subplot" to The Wild Party, since the female itly sexual.
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